Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Butler

2012 WI 37, 811 N.W.2d 807, 340 Wis. 2d 1, 2012 WL 1110116, 2012 Wisc. LEXIS 32
CourtWisconsin Supreme Court
DecidedApril 4, 2012
DocketNo. 2010AP3013-D
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 2012 WI 37 (Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Butler) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wisconsin Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Butler, 2012 WI 37, 811 N.W.2d 807, 340 Wis. 2d 1, 2012 WL 1110116, 2012 Wisc. LEXIS 32 (Wis. 2012).

Opinions

PER CURIAM.

¶ 1. This is a companion case to In re Disciplinary Proceedings Against Addison, 2012 WI 38 (No. 2010AP3014-D), which is being released at the same time as this opinion. Both cases involve the same underlying set of facts and one or more criminal convictions arising from those facts. As in that proceeding, we are called upon here to decide whether to impose discipline reciprocal to that imposed by the Supreme Court of Illinois, which in this case would be a 30-day suspension of the license of Attorney Benjamin C. Butler to practice [3]*3law in Wisconsin. Although Attorney Butler's admitted conduct, like the conduct of Attorney Stephan Addison, is both unprofessional and unseemly, and although we may have imposed a more severe level of discipline if the Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR) had prosecuted this matter directly in the first instance rather than filing a reciprocal discipline complaint, given the standards in our rules that apply to reciprocal discipline situations, we determine that we must impose the same 30-day license suspension in this matter as the Supreme Court of Illinois imposed. We do not impose costs on Attorney Butler, given his agreement that reciprocal discipline should be imposed, which obviated the need for the appointment of a referee and the costs of a full disciplinary proceeding.

¶ 2. On December 14, 2010, the OLR filed a formal disciplinary complaint against Attorney Butler requesting the imposition of reciprocal discipline and a motion requesting the court to issue an order to show cause to Attorney Butler. On March 31, 2011, the court ordered Attorney Butler to inform the court of any claim, predicated on the grounds set forth in SCR 22.22(3),1 why the imposition of discipline identical to [4]*4that imposed by the Supreme Court of Illinois would be unwarranted, and of the factual basis for any such claim. On April 11, 2011, Attorney Butler filed a response stating that he was not making any claim under SCR 22.22(3) and that he was not raising any objection to the imposition of discipline identical to that imposed in Illinois.

¶ 3. Because this matter involves allegations of serious misconduct that occurred in Wisconsin and led to Attorney Butler being criminally convicted in a Wisconsin court following his no-contest plea in December 2006, on September 23, 2011, this court issued an order directing the OLR to advise the court as to why it had chosen in this matter to seek the imposition of reciprocal discipline under SCR 22.22 rather than to conduct its own investigation and pursue its own disciplinary complaint under SCRs 22.11 through 22.16.

¶ 4. The OLR filed a response to the court's order on October 12, 2011. Its response states that it first learned of the criminal charges against Attorneys Butler and Addison in December 2005. It opened grievance investigations against them at that time, but placed those investigations on hold pending the result of the criminal actions in Green Lake County, Wisconsin. The OLR's response indicates that, for a number of reasons, it will commonly place investigations in which there are pending criminal charges on hold until those criminal charges have been resolved.

¶ 5. In this situation, after the OLR received notice of the convictions and sentences imposed on Attorneys Butler and Addison in December 2006, it reopened its investigations. Approximately one month later, however, it was notified that the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (the Illinois Commission) had also opened a grievance investigation [5]*5against Attorneys Butler and Addison. The Illinois Commission expressly informed the OLR that it had set aside resources to conduct an investigation that would go beyond the record compiled in the criminal case and that it intended to conduct supplemental interviews of the victim and other witnesses.

¶ 6. The OLR's response states that after it was informed of the Illinois Commission's investigation, the OLR director made the decision to allow the Illinois Commission to take the lead role in investigating the conduct of Attorneys Butler and Addison and in seeking discipline because both attorneys were practicing law primarily in Illinois for Illinois law firms. The OLR further explains that it wanted to avoid the duplicative use of investigatory resources in the two jurisdictions. It states that it is common for it and other lawyer regulatory agencies in other jurisdictions to allow the "primary jurisdiction," i.e., the jurisdiction in which the attorney is primarily practicing, to investigate and impose discipline in the first instance, with the other applicable jurisdictions then seeking the imposition of reciprocal discipline.

¶ 7. The OLR's response further asserts that it communicated periodically with the Illinois Commission during the more than three years in which the Illinois Commission conducted its investigation and its prosecution of the Illinois disciplinary action. The OLR notes that it was ultimately able to review the more than 1,700 pages of discovery from the criminal actions that Attorneys Butler and Addison provided to the Illinois Commission, plus copies of a video discovery deposition of a witness, the discovery depositions of the two respondent attorneys, expert witness information, and other video and audio evidence. In addition, the Illinois Commission provided to the OLR another 1,400 [6]*6pages of documents from its own investigation. The OLR asserts that, following the conclusion of the Illinois disciplinary proceeding, it reviewed and evaluated these voluminous documents before it reached the determination not to conduct its own investigation and instead to seek the imposition of reciprocal discipline.

¶ 8. Because the record in this proceeding still did not contain information regarding the factual basis for the felony to which Attorney Butler pled no contest, we issued a second order directing the OLR to state the factual basis for the felony charge and to provide public documents from the criminal case that related to the factual basis. The OLR's response contained a stipulation filed in the Green Lake County action at the time Attorney Butler entered his plea to a reduced charge, as well as the transcripts of the plea and sentencing hearings. The content of the criminal stipulation will be discussed later in this opinion.

¶ 9. Given that this matter has been presented to us in the context of a request for the imposition of reciprocal discipline, we are constrained to follow the rules that we have adopted for such proceedings. See SCR 22.22. We therefore shall impose the identical discipline imposed in the other jurisdiction unless we determine that one of the three exceptions set forth in SCR 22.22(3) applies. In assessing whether one of those exceptions applies, we further are limited to the record in this matter, which primarily consists of the OLR's complaint, the documents from the Illinois disciplinary proceeding that have been filed by the OLR, and the documents relating to Attorney Butler's no contest plea in the Green Lake County criminal action that have also been submitted by the OLR. In particular, the stipulations entered in the Green Lake County criminal [7]*7case and in the Illinois disciplinary proceeding are the only sources in the record of this proceeding of facts that have been proven or stipulated regarding the underlying events. The factual recitation that follows is primarily taken from those stipulations.

¶ 10.

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Related

Office of Lawyer Regulation v. James C. Ritland
2021 WI 36 (Wisconsin Supreme Court, 2021)
Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Adam A. Gillette
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Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Addison
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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2012 WI 37, 811 N.W.2d 807, 340 Wis. 2d 1, 2012 WL 1110116, 2012 Wisc. LEXIS 32, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/office-of-lawyer-regulation-v-butler-wis-2012.